Nevada family-law case summaries

Natasha and Michael Neyman married in 2002, had two children, separated in 2006, and divorced in 2015 through an agreed-upon (stipulated) divorce decree. The decree gave Natasha primary physical custody and required Michael to pay child support, the children's extracurricular costs, and two kinds of spousal support (alimony): $3,000 per month in general family support and $2,000 per month in "rehabilitative" alimony to help pay for Natasha's education. To get the rehabilitative alimony, Natasha had to give Michael proof she was enrolled in school. These payments were to run for seven years, starting May 1, 2015, meaning the final payment was due April 20, 2022. Natasha stopped going to school at the end of 2020 because she and the children had health problems, and by January 2021 she was no longer enrolled. She did not give Michael proof of enrollment, but Michael kept paying her $2,000 per month for 15 more months — a total of $30,000. On June 30, 2022 — about two months after the alimony period ended — Natasha filed a motion asking the court to increase child support and family support because Michael's income had gone up sharply, and to recover money she said Michael still owed her. Michael agreed his child support should go up, but said his alimony obligation had ended in May 2022 and that he was not behind on any payments. The district court ruled that it had no power (jurisdiction) to change the alimony because the alimony period had already expired when Natasha filed her motion, and there was no evidence Michael was behind. It raised Michael's monthly child support to $4,035. It also found that Natasha had failed her duty to give proof of school enrollment for 15 months, but that Michael knew or should have known she was no longer in school. Splitting the difference, the court ordered Natasha to repay Michael $15,000 — half of what he had paid during that period — then subtracted $6,500 in attorney fees Michael still owed her, leaving Natasha owing Michael $8,500. The court found neither side was a "prevailing party," so each paid their own fees. On appeal, the Court of Appeals agreed with the district court on most points but reversed the order requiring Natasha to repay the rehabilitative alimony. The court explained that under Nevada law, once an alimony period ends, a court can only modify alimony if the paying spouse was behind ("in arrears") when the motion was filed. Here, the alimony period had ended on April 30, 2022, and Natasha herself had admitted Michael had made all his payments before she filed. The text messages she pointed to as a supposed agreement to push the start date back did not count, because the decree said it could only be changed by a written agreement signed by both parties. The most important reversal concerned the order that Natasha repay $8,500. The court found that Michael never properly asked for that money back. He mentioned in passing that he had overpaid, but he did not formally request reimbursement, and did not say how much, until his pretrial memorandum — filed after Natasha's lawyer had quit, after the discovery period closed, and just two weeks before the hearing. The court concluded this violated Natasha's right to fair notice and a chance to respond (due process). It therefore reversed the repayment order and directed that Natasha receive the full $6,500 in unpaid attorney fees with no reduction. The court also upheld the child support ruling (finding Natasha had not properly argued below that the base amount was too low for the children's needs), upheld the denial of her request to postpone the hearing, and upheld the court's refusal to accept her digital documents, which she needed to bring in physical form so they could be authenticated and so Michael could object.

This is a divorce case between Irina and Douglas Ansell. Before marrying in 2012, the couple signed a prenuptial agreement—a contract that spells out, in advance, how property will be treated as "separate" (belonging to one spouse) or "community" (shared) and how it will be divided if they divorce. Doug's separate property included several businesses (called the Ansell companies) and real estate. The couple married, had one child, and Irina filed for divorce in October 2015. The case took years. The district court split it into three separate trials: one on child custody, one on whether the prenuptial agreement was valid (the court ruled it was and that it would govern the financial issues), and a third on how to divide the couple's assets. That third trial happened in December 2017, but the court did not actually issue the divorce decree until February 2021—more than three years later. The decree gave Irina some alimony, child support, and an "equalization payment" (a lump sum meant to balance out the division of property) of $972,471. After the decree, both sides filed motions. Doug asked the court to give him credit for personal income tax payments he had made, arguing those taxes were a shared community obligation, and he asked for attorney fees. The court agreed with Doug: it credited half his tax payments against what he owed Irina and awarded him attorney fees, which together wiped out his entire equalization payment obligation—reducing Irina's award to essentially zero. The court denied Irina's own late-filed motion as untimely. Irina then appealed. Before reaching the substance, the court had to deal with a technical problem: Irina's notice of appeal named only the November 2021 post-trial order, not the February 2021 decree. Doug argued this meant she could not challenge the decree at all. The court disagreed. It explained that Nevada strongly prefers deciding appeals on their merits rather than on technicalities, that Irina's intent to appeal the decree could be reasonably inferred from the circumstances, and that Doug was not misled or harmed. The court did, however, remind Irina's counsel to name every order they intend to appeal in the future. On the substance, the court reached mixed results. It rejected Irina's argument that the district court was required to accept a particular expert's much higher valuation of Doug's businesses (about $9.9 million in appreciation); the court found she had not properly preserved that argument, had not cited the record to support it, and had not cogently explained why the court was bound to adopt that valuation. But the court agreed with Irina on several other points. It held that the district court wrongly refused to give Irina any share of the increase in value of Doug's real estate. Under the plain language of the prenuptial agreement, Irina automatically got a community property interest in the appreciation of Doug's separate property—whether or not she had put personal time or effort into managing the properties. The court also held that the district court wrongly assigned certain of Doug's loans and debts to the community, because the prenuptial agreement said debts became joint only if both spouses signed a document agreeing to be jointly indebted, and no such document existed. The court further held that the district court failed to consider whether Irina received any benefit from Doug's income after the couple separated—income that, under Nevada law, is presumed to remain community property until the divorce is final. On the tax issue, the court found the prenuptial agreement was ambiguous about whether Irina could be liable for tax debt incurred during the marriage without a signed joint-indebtedness document, and the district court had not made the factual findings about the parties' intent needed to resolve that ambiguity. Because of that, and because it was unclear whether Irina received any of Doug's income during the relevant period, the court reversed the tax ruling and sent it back. Finally, because the court reversed parts of the decree, the attorney fee awards no longer rested on solid ground—it was no longer clear that Doug was the "prevailing party" or that he had beaten his settlement offer—so the court vacated (cancelled) the fee awards. The case returns to the district court to redo the affected portions.

Amr and Huriyeh Hosny married in 1989 in Macau and moved to the United States in 2004, where they ran businesses and held assets together. They separated in 2018, and Huriyeh filed for divorce. After a 2020 trial, the family court entered a divorce decree that, among other things, ordered Amr to pay Huriyeh $5,000 per month in lifetime alimony (ongoing financial support), reimburse her $6,000 for an expert witness, pay a $38,000 loan Huriyeh had taken from her sister (in part to cover her attorney and expert fees), and pay off a U.S. Bank credit card. Amr appealed. The Court of Appeals found several problems with how the trial court reached its decisions. On alimony, the appeals court concluded that the trial court's factual findings were "contradictory, unclear, and not supported by substantial evidence." The trial court noted that Amr's income was $120,000 in 2017 but had dropped to $72,000 by 2019, yet it never settled on which income figure it actually used to set the alimony amount. The appeals court said the trial court appeared to assume Amr could keep earning what he historically had, without accounting for the downturn in his business tied in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. The trial court also divided rental properties between the spouses, which means Amr will collect less rental income going forward — a fact the appeals court said the trial court did not properly factor in when deciding how much support Amr could afford to pay or how much Huriyeh actually needed. The appeals court also identified erroneous findings about how much Amr paid to support the couple's adult children and how much he was already paying Huriyeh during the case. On the demonstrative exhibits (exhibits 5 and 14, which were charts or summaries the trial court relied on), the appeals court held it was error to admit them because the expert who apparently prepared them never testified to establish the foundation for the financial information they contained. The exhibits also contained mathematical errors and information inconsistent with other admitted evidence. Because the trial court leaned on these flawed exhibits in setting alimony and dividing debts, the appeals court found the error prejudicial. On the $6,000 in expert witness fees, the appeals court explained that under Nevada law, an expert generally must testify in order to recover more than $1,500 in fees. Because this expert did not testify, the trial court abused its discretion in awarding fees above that threshold. The appeals court reversed the district court's judgment and sent the case back for further proceedings consistent with its order. On remand, the trial court will need to reassess the full division of community property and debt (including the promissory note, the Bank of America card, and the U.S. Bank card) when deciding alimony, and ensure Huriyeh does not receive a "double recovery" for fees and costs already covered through debts assigned to Amr.